1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to conveyor lubricants. More particularly, the present invention concerns the use of alkyl amines in conveyor lubricant compositions. Even more particularly, the present invention concerns concentrates containing an alkyl amine as a coupling agent and conveyor lubricants prepared therefrom.
2. Prior Art
In breweries, soft drink bottling operations and food processing plants, conveyors are used to move the bottles, jars, cans, and the like along the line. In order to keep the conveyor chains clean and provide lubrication, it is customary to use a lubricant, such as an aqueous soap-based lubricant or an alpha olefin sulfonate-based lubricant. The lubricant compositions, also, include chelating agents to prevent precipitation of calcium and magnesium ions. These lubricants are, generally, manufactured and sold as concentrates which must be diluted with soft water, at the point of use, wherein the dilution factor is generally 1 part lubricant to 100 parts water.
Both the water soluble soaps and the alpha olefin sulfonates conveyor lubricants present certain disadvantages. The water soluble soap lubricant, when dissolved in hard water will precipitate as the calcium or magnesium salt of the fatty acid. This precipitate forms an undesirable greasy-type film which must be removed from the conveyor equipment. Also, soaps lack resistance to acid. When contacted with an acid, the soap is converted back to the free fatty acid which is insoluble. The free fatty acids, will accumulate as a greasy soil on both the conveyor and the beverage container. This is quite often the case in the bottling of acidic products such as beer, soft drinks and pickles, as the beverage or brine may overflow or the container may break.
As noted, both the water soluble soap and alpha olefin sulfonate conveyor lubricants have a conventional dilution factor of 100 parts water to 1 part concentrated lubricant. The various solubilizers utilized in the water soluble soap lubricant and the alpha olefin sulfonate lubricant have limited solubilizing ability thereby limiting the amount of active ingredient which can be employed in prior art conveyor lubricant use solutions, thus, creating added expense, vis-a-vis, the amount of lubricant needed to lubricate.
Representative of prior art soap based lubricants is found in U.S. Pat. No. 4,274,973; U.S. Pat. No. 3,860,521. Representative of prior art alpha olefin sulfonate lubricant is U.S. Pat. No. 4,604,220.
The present invention, as will subsequently be detailed, obviates many of the drawbacks associated with the prior art.